Happy Heart Day

Howdy, folks!  Have I got a quick and simple card for you today.

Sometimes you need a card that goes together in just a couple minutes.  This one was also great for using up scraps of patterned paper.  I started with the sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch:

And this inspiration picture from Just Add Ink:

The pattern on the straws in the lower right corner made me think of chevrons, so I went with that.  The colors in the inspiration pic also dovetailed nicely with the color challenge from Pals Paper Arts:

I already missed the deadline to enter the challenge over there, though.  Oh well, it happens.  That's it for me today, I'll see you tomorrow with the Friday Flashback.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Yippee-Skippee!
Ink:  Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Crumb Cake, Crisp Cantaloupe DSP, Pistachio Pudding DSP
Accessories:  Sweetheart punch

Speckled Spring Greetings

Morning, peeps!  I've got a nice springy card to share with you today.

Yep, I like it.  It was easy peasy to put together--just a few die cuts, some splatter, and done.  I used the sketch from Create with Connie and Mary:

Well, I didn't follow the sketch *exactly* since I forgot the smaller words and somehow I didn't even copy down that there was another layer on the original sketch.  Still, I think you can tell that this is what I was using for inspiration, right?

The colors are from Fab Friday:

Nice springy palette, that.  I like it.  :)  And since all my flowers and the greeting are all done using Framelits or Thinlits, I can enter this at the Paper Players too:

And that's all she wrote today!  Have an awesome Wednesday, peeps.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Flower Patch, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink:  Pear Pizzazz, So Saffron, Pink Pirouette
Paper:  Pear Pizzazz, So Saffron, Pink Pirouette, Soft Sky
Accessories:  Flower Fair Framelits, Hello You Thinlits

Nachos Calling

Howdy, Nacho fans!  Wow, we had 9 players in last week's sketch challenge, woohoo!  Okay, so one of them was me but still that's a big group for our lil challenge :)  And this week we have a fun and bright color combination for you to try:

How much are we all going to miss Strawberry Slush when it retires in a few short months?  So here's my card for today's Nacho Average Color Challenge:

Is it weird that I would totally love to have a phone like that and I don't even hardly ever talk on the phone? :)  This card was quick to put together--a little embossing powder, some Framelits, add in a couple Candy Dots and bam.  Done.  I thought about putting another Candy Dot in the center of the phone's dial...might still do that.

Anyway, that's it for me today.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to visit the Nacho Average Challenges blog and post your own colorful creation over there for us to look at :)  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Timeless Talk
Ink:  Versamark, Bermuda Bay
Paper:  Strawberry Slush, Bermuda Bay, Hello Honey, Whisper White, Moonlight DSP
Accessories:  Circles & Starburst Framelits, Brights Candy Dots, Hexagon punch, Dimensionals

The Louvre

Good morning, peeps!  Hope you had a good Easter weekend.  Before I get to today's scrappy Monday scrapbook layout, I want to share this:

Today would have been my sweet friend Neelu's 35th birthday, and I miss her terribly.  Happy birthday, dear friend.

So, scrapbook layout.  You can see my original blog posts here and here, though it looks like I put them up before I edited all the photos because they're a lot lighter on the prints.  I think they look way better edited, and actually they look better IRL than they do in this photo of my layout.  I'm very proud of myself for squeezing in all eleven pictures that I printed out, and I only cropped a bunch off of two of them (the ones in the bottom right corner).  Didn't need much journaling, I think the photos of the statues speak for themselves.

That curl of hair on the statue of Artemis is so elegant.  I love how the title block came out.  I want to do this same alphabet for all my Paris page titles, and do the Eiffel Tower from Artistic Etchings with it.  My Elegant Eggplant ink pad is extra juicy, so the letters aren't *quite* as crisp as they might be, but I still think it turned out pretty fantastic.

My color palette for today:  Whisper White (the page base), Smoky Slate, Elegant Eggplant, Crushed Curry, and just a smidge of Coastal Cabana.

Cheers, peeps!  I'm off to go for a run.  Well, a slow jog.  I'm not fast ;)

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Empire Alphabet, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant (ink pad & marker), Smoky Slate, Coastal Cabana
Paper:  Whisper White, Eastern Elegance DSP
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents Framelits

Friday Flashback: Sweet Shoppe Alphabet

Happy Friday, peeps!  Welcome to this week's Friday Flashback, featuring the Sweet Shoppe Alphabet.  It's a very cute alphabet, I'm happy for the reminder to break it out and use it again!  So let's go flash back.

This is a more recent creation, I made it just last December.

Ok, I admit, it's a little sad that the Flashback is pretty short and one of the photos is the index card I did for the Splitcoast gallery.

Also features Broadsheet Alphabet & Array of Sunshine

Ok, so there's one more project I used the alphabet for.  Clearly I needed the reminder to use it again, and I'm super excited about what I made!

These photos are from way back in 2006 when the hubs and I lived in North Carolina and we had a go at growing flowers in our backyard, no mean feat for me who has two black thumbs.  The layout is very, very simple, so to make it a little more interesting I matted half the pictures with different colors and left the other half unmatted.  So let's take a look at that title:

Your eyes do not deceive you, I used a different alphabet for the capital letters (Empire Alphabet).  I just love mixed font titles and I love how those two looked together!  I will admit, though, that it took For.Ev.Er. to stamp the title on here.  I always worry I'll do something like drop an inked stamp on the cardstock and I'll have to start over, but I managed to get through that entire very long title with no oopsies.  Even spelled it right.

And I finally used the largest of the Butterfly Thinlits.  This is a flashback for color too, that lovely shade on the butterfly is the long-retired Marvelous Magenta.  It's such an 80s color, am I right?  It retired shortly after I started stamping, so I only have a few pieces of 12x12 cardstock this color and no 8.5x11 and no ink pad.  If you want to get technical, the cardstock I have is from before Stampin' Up! went to "true" 12x12, it's about a quarter inch shy of twelve inches square.  And now I have three pieces of it plus some scraps, but it was worth it to use one piece for this layout.

There's my color palette:  Pistachio Pudding, Garden Green, Marvelous Magenta, Ballet Blue, and Elegant Eggplant even though it looks black 'cause it's not.  So that's it for me this week, peeps, hope you have a marvelous weekend, whether or not it's magenta ;)

Supplies, scrapbook layout only:
Stamps:  Sweet Shoppe Alphabet, Empire Alphabet, Embrace Life
Ink:  Garden Green, Ballet Blue, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Pistachio Pudding, Marvelous Magenta, Ballet Blue, Elegant Eggplant
Accessories:  Butterfly Thinlits

Eiffel Tower Birthday

So I had this idea with this week's Nacho sketch.

I thought, what if I used stamps to create the two banner-y layers?  So I gave it a try.

It took some finagling with the Stamp-a-ma-jig, and I wish that I'd moved the image panel a little bit further down, but overall I think it worked out okay.  I pulled out some old retired favorites (Artistic Etchings and Curly Cute, still love them both) and used the little doily stamp from Tea Party to complete my collage.  Is it a collage?  It's not a whole lot of elements.  But anyway.

My parental units are on their way out here right now, so I've got a bunch of stuff to do today, like make up the guest bed.  Better get to it.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Artistic Etchings, Curly Cute, Tea Party
Ink:  Soft Sky, Smoky Slate, Elegant Eggplant, Island Indigo
Paper:  Soft Sky, Whisper White
Accessories:  Labels Collection Framelits, Stamp-a--ma-jig

Florence, Firenze

It's April Fool's Day (and my girl Sadie's birthday), but no tricks here!  I've been having SO much fun working on my scrapbooks lately that I'm sharing more pages today, even if it isn't Scrappy Monday.  So Scrappy Wednesday, y'all.  I've got about a dozen more layouts already done and waiting to be posted here, and I can't wait to start on another one.

See the original pics here and here.  On my first trip to Italy (hubs had been there before for work), we went with some friends and spent about half of our 10 days in Rome, then divided the rest of our time between Florence, Pisa, and Venice.  So this is the first layout of my Florence pictures.

I wanted to use the Morning Post alphabet for my title since I'd used it on the Venice pages, but it just wouldn't quite fit on there so I used the Italian Firenze instead, and then stamped Florence with the Spencerian Alphabet above it.

How fantastic is that Venetian Romance paper?  It's not just for Venice anymore.  SO glad I got an extra pack or two before it retired.  I thought about adding some accents in the upper right corner and bottom center, but I didn't want to cover up the pretty pattern.

Sorry this is a wee bit blurry, but I wanted to share a closeup of the stamp I used under the pic of Sarah and me on the carousel.  It's from the long-retired Sweet Serendipity; it took me a while of going through my old stamps to find the perfect sentiment for this page.

Here's the color palette for the first layout:  Very Vanilla, Tangerine Tango, Soft Suede, and Cajun Craze.  I wanted warm colors to go with the terracotta tiles on the roofs.

The slightly different color palette for the second layout:  still Very Vanilla, Tangerine Tango, and Soft Suede, but I added in a bit of Hello Honey, Always Artichoke and Island Indigo.

That's it for me today.  Cheers, peeps!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Morning Post Alphabet, Spencerian Alphabet Lower, Bliss, Sweet Serendipity
Ink:  Tangerine Tango, Soft Suede, Cajun Craze, Island Indigo
Paper:  Very Vanilla, Cajun Craze, Tangerine Tango, Always Artichoke, Hello Honey, Soft Suede, Venetian Romance DSP
Accessories:  retired something-or-other label punch, circle punch, hexagon punch